The True Story of Peacemaker

 

Ayenwatha, Peacemaker and Tododaho

I will be telling the true story of Peacemaker, the teenager who received the vision of the Great Law of Peace from the Great Spirit a thousand years ago — and ended the wars between the 5 nations of the Iroquois.  I learned the tale from Mohawk Peace Chief Jake Swamp and his wife Judy Swamp (who knows the woman’s side of the story).  Every 5 years, Jake tells the story over 4 days at the site of the League’s Grand Council at Lake Onandaga.

My version of the story is considerably shorter.  Here is a picture of Jake:

It is a story of Sky Woman, who fell to Earth and created Turtle Island, of a peace and harmony shredded by generations of war, of the evil Shaman Tododaho, The Crooked One — who tries to stop the burgeoning peace movement started by Peacemaker and his allies Ayanwatha, the great chief and orator and Jinkonsaseh, the Clan Mother who becomes the Great Mother. 

But most of all it is the story of what one change agent, a teenager no less, can do.  Sometime around a thousand years, Peacemaker finally succeeded — and the Grand Council met at Lake Onandaga in New York, agreeing to a peace that lasted a thousand years.  The Good Mind had won out over the evil and greed that lurks in the human heart.

How did Peacemaker do it?  What can we learn from him, Ayenwatha and the powerful Jinkonsaseh?

A lot. 

Great Peace Re-enactment

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Every day my creative flow, my way of navigating from one project to another, is led by a mysterious river of energy.

I have learned to trust this river. It feels like fluid subtle positive electromagnetic energy. In whatever I am up to (writing, painting, creating jewelry, working with my assistant making travel arrangements, etc.) I am guided by this energy. When I feel the energy shift, I stop. Usually it’s because somehow it’s not fun anymore, or isn’t flowing with effortless ease. So I stop, wait and listen. I ask my internal compass to guide me.

“OK, what wants to happen now?”, I’ll inquire. Then I wait and listen. Listening for me is often seeing a image on my “inner screen”. And it also happens through an inner voice that softly whispers something.

So for instance, I am in my art studio creating a Floating Painting, following the moment to moment “instructions” from my inner self, as I paint away. Then it happens. The positive effortless ease stops. So I stop. I wait for my “instructions” and then move to the next “assignment”.

In the last month, it has been curious to me, that often I am led to the garden in the back of our house in Point Loma. I look around and wait until I see something light up, and think “oh this would be fun to work on, or rearrange in a fresh way”. Then I ask my inner compass, “May I do this?” I always get an immediate “yes or no”. Actually it’s more like I either get a “Yes!” with huge positively charged energy; or get nothing, the energy is dull. If the inner navigation is not the positive river of “Yes!” then I wait and continue to look around my environment and within, until I do get that “Yes” connection.

Often when I am in this still place and the next directive has not appeared to me, I will look inwardly. Instantly I usually see, feel or think of something delightful I might do next. When that inner image arises, again I ask, “May I do this?” If I receive a “Yes!” than I slowly proceed to follow a path guided by this river of positive energy towards my next “assignment”. Each moment “sniffing” the way along the “river” through my environment. Often I never make it to the goal of what I have seen in my mind initially, as something along the path towards that goal has “spoken” “Yes!” this is what want to happen now. My attention then follows this. Whatever wants to be done next, is done not by the separate Lisa sense of myself that sees the world through two other eyes, but the me who sees with the one inner eye. The me who is completely surrendered to a living force far beyond my personal self.

In this way my navigation, my goals and visions, follow a completely nonlinear path. Because of all my past conditioning of making lists, goals, project plans, this way of navigating life is radically different. As my mentor, Jonas Salk so often said, “Let intuition be your guide, with reason by its side”. I am doing this, completely surrendered to this positive river of energy . Since I have embodied this navigational process, my life is always filled with a vitality of joy, bliss and happiness beyond my wildest dreams of what is possible. It feels like I am floating in the sweet spot of a rapidly moving river of love.

Often I am led to the garden. There I work with my bare hands touching the dirt, planting flowers and gathering dead leafs to throw away. Initially the pull to work in my garden was a challenge for my mind, when it chattered “But I have such a full plate of work that I should do, is this the highest priority now?”. (Often I am spending 2 to 3 hours each day with my hands in dirt)

I have come to realize the value of directly touching dirt as it connects me to the whole living earth, the biosphere we live in (including dirt, water, air, insects, plants, animals etc. ). In my experience the natural world is connected to the whole of life on this glorious garden planet. By touching the dirt throughout my day, I also am touching the one life, outside my human sphere. The living earth is sharing enormous energy and information that helps me understand my place in service to all of life. I see visions of our human species surviving and thriving on this planet in the 21st century. However we MUST reconnect to the dirt and plants (the biosphere as a whole). We must sync ourselves with the living body of the whole earth connected, an alive conscious awakening universe.

Work with the dirt in your garden. It will help our species survive the challenging times ahead of us.

Love, Lisa

PRECISION OF FIT

I am sorting though old floppies, to dispose of, and chanced to look at a BU file of an essay composed in 1986. The concept of “precision of fit” remains critical, and I often couple it with the concept of “sufficient action”. I copy/paste my old essay into my personal blog and present a link to it here. The essay goes into some of the precision of physics and biology to make the point that we need to consider such precision and complexity in our social systems.

Find this essay on my personal blog on WordPress:

http://larryvictor.wordpress.com/2007/08/18/precision-of-fit/

The Critical Catalyst: A “New Story”

 In The Enlightenment of the 1700s, the crucial factor, the catalyst that finally upended the old worldview and jumpstarts the paradigm flip, appears to have been the writings of the author Voltaire.  Although known primarily as satirist and essayist, Voltaire was also an historian and scholar. 

His books on science and the past popularized not only the Copernican Revolution and the significance of Newton’s achievements, his true history of the French royalty gave a historical center to the new worldview, it gave the new paradigm a “Story”. 

Every worldview is based on its Story of who we are, how we got here and where we are going—it must answer those three essential questions.  Voltaire explained to his time a New Story, how the king, rather than a divine being, is just a man driven by the lust for power—thus we should have a democracy in which the people have the power.   Voltaire declared that Laws of Nature caused events here on Earth, not God.  Science should thus guide us rather than religion.   He made the concept of progress a common one, focusing attention on science and the future in a whole new way and giving the multiple revolutions to come a powerful image of what they could be. 

It was this New Story of Voltaire, this re-answering of the three essential questions, that allowed the new Copernican paradigm to finally transcend the cultish control the old Medieval powers had on the population.  Once it was realized that the divine rights of the king and nobility were just made up to enrich the few, that control evaporated very quickly.

By the 1760s, the rulers Louis XV of France and George III of England were suddenly faced with a large part of the population that despised them and wanted deep change, especially for George III in the American colonies.  Their personal mistakes concerning foreign policy and ruinous tax structures ended up discrediting the whole Medieval worldview.  It was a time very similar to our own.

Old paradigms disguise themselves with partial, glorified histories and lots of Public Relations.  One’s view of history guides opinions about everything from politics to religion, so a history based on a new paradigm changes opinions like nothing else.  In fact, no new history, no New Story, no paradigm flip, no new future.  The re-telling of the Story is the catalyst to the whole process of the new transcending the old.  Once the old was transcended, the new worldview grabbed power and reinvented the world. 

The first step then toward a new world is to realize a new history.  Beyond the evolution of species is the story of human consciousness and how it evolved.  This is what I will be bringing to Storyfield.

Troubadours of Transformation

A Beautiful r EVOLUTION
Troubadours of Transformation Shifting Global Consciousness

This is a workshop I will be leading in the fall through the Institute of Imaginal Studies…these are the ideas I’ve been thinking about. Though I think I know what I mean by these things, I don’t yet know how to make them ‘happen’ live in a group- something I think the conference will open up…

From pre-historic times the arts have ‘intuited’ and catalyzed the emergent collective consciousness. The artist has served as a vehicle for the transmission of higher order knowledge and experience, as healer, shaman and conduit of revelation. Today the Arts are often relegated to decoration, hijacked by consumerism and usurped by titillation and cleverness. In these watershed times we are called to dispel the sirens of glamour and follow the deeper call of truth, beauty and meaning. We are all called to become troubadours of transformation, nourishing the vitality of the inner life and awakening emergent higher capacities through our creative expression.

Discussion and hands-on play with creative modalities to foment:

• Discovering ‘Strange Attractors’: the power of images to make positive futures probable
• Shifting Cultural Meta-Narratives, changing the stories we tell ourselves
• Accessing the realms that are not linear, sequential or bound by time
• Tapping ‘super conscious’ solutions from deeper and higher realms of reality

meta-perspective

Here’s an excerpt from an article I just wrote for a journal in India and it expresses what I’ve been thinking about…

“…It is not the nation state, nor the tribes and races of humanity, nor the religions and traditions of our world’s diverse cultures that must circumscribe the boundary of our identity in these times. An emerging planetary culture demands a new paradigm- a way of grasping the whole that both includes and transcends the differences. What is needed is an identification large enough to hold the magnitude and enormity of the world now emerging. In my parent’s generation we were taught that the world we inhabited was the size of a single galaxy. It was thought we might one day discover another galaxy- perhaps several. A few decades later we aimed our Hubble telescope on a part of the night sky that was dark and empty space and gazed with wonderment at thousands of galaxies dancing in one tiny aperture. “Who tells me Thou Art dark, oh my mother Divine? Thousands of Suns and Moons from Thy body do shine!” (Lyrics to a Bengali Chant) And as we peered into the microcosm our gaze penetrated further still, from atom to electron to quark until we plunged into a quantum foam of virtual particles popping into and out of existence. The world we live in has expanded by exponential proportions. So too must our worldview.

The paradigm fitting of the 21st century will begin with the necessity of a ‘post-modern meta-perspective’ but it will not be flattened by materialism. It will embrace diversity and complexity without abandoning meaning. In a more sophisticated comprehension of the relationship between systems of knowledge and truth itself, there will be a higher order integration of reason’s breadth with intuitions depth. The capacity to hold a meta- perspective that embraces multifarious viewpoints without losing the polestar of truth and meaning is, in my view, the most imperative demand of our times.”

Even more important than a new and better cultural narrative is our ability to hold a meta perspective to the story- and in a way that doesn’t flatten.

The Darwin Project

Howdy; My name is Lion Kimbro. I saw this group today, they call themselves The Darwin Project, and they published a book(let) online, “The Great Adventure,” which they are billing as a “new story” about Charles Darwin.

The Now Living Field we Twin Wing with Everything

Thanks Larry for your posting yesterday, as it inspires me to share more openly through poetry:

In the great Joy of this Now,

Here in the Living Field of Aliveness Everywhere,

We can but Dance.

Story Fields are Jet Streams.

Circling the great roundness.

Human Brain Alive and Growing.

Unfurling flower bud Conscious,

Watching itself in Beauty.

We beyond duality,

In the One Reality

See clearly the Dance.

Ten thousand Tapestries

Woven into the center sphere,

Unity Silent and Still.

We are there Now.

Present awaiting the first strand,

This alive pulse guiding the weaving,

Form emerging from the event horizon.

Glorious creation arising from the empty Now.

Birth into form.

We witness the elegance of the pattern.

We dance in celebration.

We are not atoms

We are witness.

We see the story circling

Clouds around Planet Earth.

Dancing as Jet Stream,

More rapid that collective winds,

Jet stream are rivers,

Alive Consciously Charged Story.

Man made jets like civilizations,

Travel together in mass

On steel containers lifting us,

to new destinations.

While the One watches,

The great Mystery at Play.

The Friend is one Wing,

I the other.

Together we fly

On one Now Living Field

Nondual Butterfly

Unified.

You and I,

Twin Wings now reading this.

You and I,

Can only fly with the Body,

We must sync in this Body Now,

To soar beyond the Jet Stream

To see from Unity.

The nondual reality.

To see Story Fields,

Moving clouds in the stream,

How fun to play!

Joy in the Flight Together on this One Body,

Love, Lisa

Visual Story Fields

Hello Story Field Friends-Most Not Met in Person Yet,

Fellow artist, Dana Lynne Anderson invited me to this conference. A major inspiration to attend comes from my passion, purpose and great joy to share (gather with my “flock”) as we fly to new territory in creating “a new world”. In 1979, I underwent life threatening brain surgery, which I was told I had a slim chance of surviving, and if I lived most likely I would be in a wheelchair the rest of my life. Instead I had a near death experience, and survived with no physical complications.

The visual story I saw in that experience has guided the rest of my life-the last 27 years since. In the N.D. experience I saw the whole earth lit up and glowing in a rainbow of colors. Each country and culture had a color and together from space viewing the whole, I saw the planet with a rainbow aura. The vision showed me that all countries and peoples are profoundly connected. The vision was so powerful, I knew I needed to express it. So I have been on a path since then to do so.

From 1979 to 1985 the primary focus of this expression was visual art. After that it was through helping others express the art of something deeper within them. Teaching creativity workshops, art therapy in hospitals, becoming a university expressive arts director, etc. All the while, also having a private practice with individuals doing a process I created called “Cocoon to Butterfly” about the art of transformation. My doctorate dissertation was entitled, “The Creative Process as Path”.  My work is an integration of psychology, spirituality and creativity.

Also along the path, mentors appeared to guide me. With Dr Jonas Salk from 1985 to 1990, we had almost daily conversations by phone about the New Story that he felt I would help create. His god was evolution, and he used to say he worked for “Evolution Inc.” He considered himself to be an artist primarily and a scientist secondarily. He created the Salk vaccine by imagining himself to be polio itself in the body, and then visually saw the how it could be defeated. He believed it was creativity that would solve humanities current challenges.

Another mentor, Francoise Gilot (aka Mrs. Picasso, who lived with Pablo for a dozen years and bore Paloma Picasso), I had the opportunity to spend a week painting with her. She is a deeply spiritual, intellectually brilliant artist, who taught me my Floating Painting process. (To view my art if interested go to http://www.lisalongworth.com). Three months after that life changing week with her, I launched my first community event incorporating my paintings at the university where I was completing my BA in fine art. (University of California San Diego).

In 2006, after two decades of private practice, I decided to take a sabbatical. It turned out to be a two year process of both writing a book (The Secret of Twin Wing) and launching a 501 (c) 3, twinwing.org. The foundation is dedicated to partnering with the planet to connect countries and cultures through creativity.

So I come to our conference with paintings and other creative expression, because they are both woven into my DNA “seeds” and a practical way I move in the current planetary story of commerce. My story is about art stopping the mind and unifying our world. I will present both 50 of my paintings and this message in Delhi, India in January 2008. (If you wish to see info about the “World Congress of Psychcolgy and Spirituality” go to my website http://www.lisalongworth.com under the calendar tab for a link to the India conference website)

Playing out the story of being an Integral Women in the 21st century, I see woman from every indigenous culture hand in hand with women from cities. I see us united as a circle. Together we hold in the wombs of our heart the baby of our new world. Together we instinctively know how to take care of our fetus, birth it with the help of our sister midwives, and raise it in our global village.

Men are by our sides in full collaborative partnership, however it is the feminine intuitive, fully connected to the instinctual knowing, that I believe is essential at this time in the evolution of our species. That we Integral Woman must take the “throne” into our full power as leaders of our people. We must shed our cocoon conditioning and emerge into the butterfly of our becoming. We have been given seeds of knowing within both our physical DNA and subtle universally connected DNA, that must be ignited and activated into action in our world.

The process of action, I call Twin Wing. It is a coming together, as you are one wing reading this, and I another wing. In between us is the one body. It will guide us to soar to new heights that we cannot see as our individual winged self. We must come together moment by moment in relational being and seeing,  verses objective seeing, to create a new story and a new humanity. One that is free and living in profound harmony with all of life.

Magical Conversations

I wrote a story entitled Magic in September 2001, which included my first encounter with Tom Atlee who has had a great influence on my life over the years. Tom facilitated the first conference/gathering that I organized on Strategies to Transform the Global Economy in 1998, and he also facilitated my 40th birthday party where I invited people to participate in a dialogue/circle to share their insights/revelations, examine the blind spots of our culture, and inspirations for transforming the system. When I first heard of the Story Field Conference, I had a burning desire to go- just for the fun of it, although it is at a busy time for me and also happens to fall on my birthday (and the birthday of my youngest son). My husband generously oferred to foot the bill as a 50th Birthday present.

I have always been a storyteller, among other things. When I was younger I also sailed around the world, and often joke that “The only thing sailors like to do more than sailing is talk about sailing.” It is true, and I think one reason we sail is that there is plenty of time for long conversations, and no end of experiences to be spun into yarns. One reason that I sailed was to discover the difference between the “story” and “reality.” I also learned how impossible it was to capture experiences and ideas on paper.

A lie is so easy to tell- by simply omitting half of a story, key facts. Our culture is awash with stories, and is extraordinarily ignorant of critical information about our history, current events, the global crisis humanity is facing now.

Since I saw a film in 1992, which prompted me to begin research into the CIA, I have been an activist, a media activist in particular, to raise consciousness about the missing pieces of the puzzle which are vital to understanding our past, the now, and steering us towards a hopeful future. In the process I have learned how to publicize, produce, organize events, conferences, rallies, marches, film premieres, films, radio shows, art contests, social movements. In 2006 I ran for Congress on a 9/11 Truth, Impeachment, Peace platform.

I played a leading role in questioning the official narrative of 9/11, and was stunned at the media silence and animosity (from the corporate and independent press) towards those who raised questions, and pointed out the stunning omissions and lies championed by the government, who used 9/11 to gain support for wars, the attacks on the Constitution, Bill of Rights, the expansion of the National Security State to the Global Police State. To overcome censorship, I published the Deception Dollars which we passed out at anti-war rallies, and have become so popular, that donations towards printing costs were used to launch the 9/11 Truth Movement.

In 2006, I hoped to publish “Conception Dollars,” to promote my candidacy, as well as Anodea Juidth’s excellent book- Waking the Global Heart- Humanity’s Rite of Passage from the Love of Power to the Power of Love. Unfortunately, the artist had computer trouble and we were unable to finish the artwork in a timely fashion. We are on the verge, now, however, of publishing Issue #10 of the Deception Dollar- if I could come up with ideas/websites for Conception Dollar pointing towards the best solutions/ideas- it is in the realm of possiblity (The artist and I will be doing a radio show, Monday, July 16th, 7-8 pm PST-inviting ideas, improvements and suggestions for the next printing.

My challenge is actually never enough time, not lack of ideas. I am very hopeful that some great synergies/collaborations will come out of the Story Field Conference. I know how transformative and fruitful conferences/gatherings/meetings can be from past experience. One of my favorite quotes is “We are all beginners amidst beginners.” Each of us has vital truths, ideas, pieces of the puzzle to share. In the grand sweep of human history, and in the more intimate contemplation of our personal “coming of age” stories, the real struggle that I see is overcoming “Fear,” and finding the courage to “Love” or connect with our deepest selves, with others, with our society, the world. I think our real task is to recognize how much power we have as individuals, within our communities (remember community comes from “free exchange of gifts”), and to help others recognize their own power. A “leaderful” society is the best antidote to tyranny and the overt grab for global dominance that we have witnessed over the decades.

David Mathison, author of “Be the Media” speaks about the media renaissance currently underway, which has the potential to dramatically shift power relations as the big money institutions continue to lose their credibility and people begin to trutst their inner voice, experiences and one another more than the manufactured reality/fears/terrors that have been used to manipulate humanity in the age of mass communications.

I hope that in addition to dialogue, we will have a chance to show and see films, as they remain one of the most powerful tools we have to tell new stories, shatter culutral myths, share cheaply and economically across cyberspace and require such a mixture of technological, artistic, musical, psychological, spiritual, mental, political, narrative, creative talents. Fritjof Capra’s book, The Turning Point, became the film- “MindWalk” which was basically a conversation. There is a new film “Zeitgeist” that challenges our culture’s basic assumptions regarding religion, 9/11 and money that was posted on the internet; It drew a lot of attention, comments and suggestions, the producer refined and improved it from the invaluable feedback he received. We could easily have conversations which “deconstruct” the dominant narrative. (Remember the quote- “In order to believe in the American Dream- you have to be asleep.”) We could also spark a new view of reality by recognizing and articulating the sea changes of consciousness that we are all a part of. We could even film or record some of our conversations to spark to encourage ever widening circles, that share our intentions and hopes.

I appreciate the photo of Hokule’a, the canoe built to retrace the path of the first Hawaiians across the Pacific. I sailed to Tahiti, at the same time Hokule’a embarked on its maiden voyage to French Polynesia, and the image brings back memories, songs, as well as the sadness and disappointment some felt because those on Hokule’a could not replicate all the ancient ways of building canoes, navigating, and communicating.

We cannot recreate the past, only help navigate towards a more hopeful future.